The Hacker News — Cyber Security, Hacking, Technology News

After hacking Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts, Hacking group OurMine has successfully hacked the Quora account Google CEO Sundar Pichai and then cross-posted to his Twitter account.

The hack became apparent when OurMine posted messages on Quora through Pichai’s account, which then appeared on his official Twitter feed late Sunday night — Thanks to the two accounts being linked.

All the tweets in question have since been removed from Pichai's Twitter feed.

Unlike Mark Zuckerberg, the three-man team Saudi hackers group did not use password exposed by 2012 LinkedIn data breach; rather they claimed to have discovered a vulnerability in Quora, which is a Q&A community launched in 2010.

The group behind OurMine claims it is "testing security" of accounts and teaching people to secure their online accounts better.

"We are just testing people security (sic), we never change their passwords, we did it because there are other hackers can hack them and change everything," OurMine told The Next Web.

OurMine also said the group shared details of the security vulnerability with Quora but didn't get any response from the company.

The group also offers its support to those it targets, charging up to $5,000 for a "scan" of their social media accounts, website security holes, and other security vulnerabilities.

However, instead of encouraging people to upgrade the security of their accounts, OurMine is looking for opportunities to promote and sell their own "services" for which it has already made $16,500.

In the escalating battle between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Apple over iPhone encryption, former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai just sided with Apple's refusal to unlock iPhone.

Yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook refused to comply with a federal court order to help the FBI unlock an iPhone owned by one of the terrorists in the mass shootings in San Bernardino, California, in December.

Here's What the FBI is Demanding:

The federal officials have asked Apple to make a less secure version of its iOS that can be used by the officials to brute force the 4-6 digits passcode on the dead shooter's iPhone without getting the device's data self-destructed.

Cook called the court order a "chilling" demand that "would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect." He argued that to help the FBI unlock the iPhone would basically providing an Encryption Backdoor that would make the products less secure.

Backdoor for Government, Backdoor for All

However, Apple is worried that once this backdoor gets created and handed over to the FBI, there would be chances that the backdoor will likely get into the hands of malicious hackers who could use it for evil purposes.

Although many politicians, including Donald Trump, have slammed Apple's decision, Google has stepped up and taken a public stand in support of Apple's decision.

"I agree 100 percent with the courts," Trump said in a statement. "But to think that Apple won't allow us to get into her cell phone, who do they think they are? No, we have to open it up."

Google Sided with Apple

In a series of tweets late Wednesday, Pichai sided with Apple while saying "forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users' privacy" and "requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent."

However, Pichai took more than 12 hours to talk about this burning issue, after Edward Snowden pointed out that Google had not yet stepped forward to speak up on his stand.

"The @FBI is creating a world where citizens rely on #Apple to defend their rights, rather than the other way around," Snowden tweeted on Wednesday. Snowden called on Google to stand with Apple, saying, "This is the most important tech case in a decade."

Pichai's stance is basically:

The technology companies will give its customers' data to law enforcement when it is required to, but the companies will not put in a "Backdoor" for the government.

While the statements made by Pichai is not quite as forceful as Cook's statement published in an open letter to its customers, we can assume both Google and Apple are together, at least in the sense that the federal agencies are asking too much.

"Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO, who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed."

With this, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin combined all Google products and services under one roof - ALPHABET.

Revealed in their Google Investor's Blog, the newly formed Public Holding Company ALPHABET would be taking place at the closing of business on October 2, 2015.

From now on Google would be the subsidiary of Alphabet and owning all of the outstanding capital stock of Google.

Moreover, by implementing a holding company reorganization the "Alphabet Merger" will close today.

Until now, the ticker symbol used by Google in the stock market was "GOOG" and "GOOGL" (on NASDAQ), which are kept same even after the merger.

This makes Google Class C Capital Stock and shares of Google Class A Common Stock being traded as Alphabet Class C Capital Stock and Alphabet Class A Common Stock.

The recasting of Board of Directors is done in a way that would comprise:

Larry Page as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

Sergey Brin as the President

Eric E. Schmidt as the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors

Sundar Pichai as the CEO of Google

Further, a noticeable change seen will be, this time the company releases its Q4 financial results in January, i.e. it will report earnings for two different components of Alphabet:

Larry Page's Alphabet

Sundar Pichai's Google

Alphabet includes:

Calico (life-extension biotech research)

Nest (smart home products)

Fiber (high-speed Internet service)

Ventures (early-stage investing)

Capital (growth-stage investing)

However, the stockholders of Google will not face gain or loss for the United States federal income tax purposes upon the conversion of their shares in the Alphabet Merger.

Google Co-Founder Larry Page announced a restructuring of the whole company, revealing the creation of the umbrella "Alphabet" corporation.

But, don’t worry… Google isn’t dead! Rather, Google will become part of Alphabet.

Why Google Rebrands As ‘Alphabet’

Over time, Google, the Mountain View company has become a lot more than just a Search Engine.

Google created and acquired a large number of other popular Internet services, including Android, YouTube and Gmail, that makes too much difficult for a single company to manage all of them effectively.

According to Google Founders, it’s time, when different projects require different leaders, different company cultures, and different types of resources.

"Our model is to have a strong CEO, who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed," Page wrote.

So the founders decided to create an all new parental brand that will manage both Google as well as its other far-flung projects — called ‘Alphabet’, going to be the biggest tech company most people have never heard of.

As a part of the new structure, Alphabet will manage Google and all of its other products, including:

Google

Calico, an anti-aging biotech Research Division

Nest, Google's Smart-Home project

Sidewalk, a company, focused on Smart Cities

Fiber, Company for High-speed Internet services

Investment arms, such as Google Capital and Google Ventures

R&D unit, such as Google X, developing Self-driving cars and Drones.

Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly traded company on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and shareholders will get one Alphabet share for every Google share they previously owned.

G is for 'Google' and 'Sundar Pichai 'is New CEO

Google’s senior vice president Sundar Pichai (Pichai Sundararajan), currently senior vice president of products, will be the new CEO of the Search Engine.

Google is now a more coherent company than it was previous. Google will now include the company's core businesses, including:

Search Engine

Advertising, Adwords, and Adsense

Google Maps

YouTube, the Video Service

Android, Mobile operating system

Chrome operating system

related technical infrastructure.

And the current CEO Larry Page will become Alphabet’s CEO. Co-founder Sergey Brin will be its president, and Eric Schmidt will be the executive chairman of Alphabet.

"It is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google," Larry Page wrote in the open letter announcing the creation of Alphabet.

"Google itself is also making all sorts of new products and I know Sundar will always be focused on innovation—continuing to stretch boundaries. I know he deeply cares that we can continue to make big strides on our core mission to organize the world's information."

The 43-year-old Sundar Pichai rose quickly at Google, from working with the Chrome team to lead both the team as well as Android as senior vice president of Products.

The Launch of Alphabet Inc. will not affect you at all, but Good news… the company’s shares jumped 6 percent after hours, adding tens of billions of dollars to its value.